


Graves

by verbaepulchellae



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon compliant future fic, Canon verse, F/M, Language, halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8389669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbaepulchellae/pseuds/verbaepulchellae
Summary: The fence is old, wrought iron and the ornamental detailing so rusted over it’s become warped. There’s a thicket of branches behind it, and Bellamy shifts his weight next to her, craning his neck to see if he can make out a break in the fence as it runs off to their right. “What do you think?” he asks, glancing back at her. “Find a way around?”
“Why bother,” Clarke says. “We’ll hop it.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little Halloween drabble for the season.
> 
> Thanks to my betas <3

The fence is old, wrought iron and the ornamental detailing so rusted over it’s become warped. There’s a thicket of branches behind it, and Bellamy shifts his weight next to her, craning his neck to see if he can make out a break in the fence as it runs off to their right. “What do you think?” he asks, glancing back at her. “Find a way around?”

It’s getting on in the afternoon, about an hour and a half until sunset, and Clarke really doesn’t want to waste time trying to walk around this however many hundreds of years old boundary. Whoever installed this fence is long dead, and Clarke’s tired enough that thinking about having to make up extra ground tomorrow to get to the trading post on time already feels exhausting.

“Why bother,” she says. “We’ll hop it.”

“Rule breaker,” Bellamy chuckles and Clarke has to resist flipping him off. 

“It’ll be an adventure,” Clarke promises, tightening her pack, and giving the fence a tug, testing its stability. “You wanted an adventure.”

“I _wanted_ a chance to camp out with you,” Bellamy grumbles, but it’s good natured as he swings himself up onto the fence and sits between the decorative spikes with a grin, watching her scramble. “Adventures can go fuck themselves.”

“Well, you got it, didn’t you?” Clarke asks, hefting herself up and mimicking Bellamy’s straddle, facing him and unable to help herself from returning his grin. 

“I did,” Bellamy laughs and leans forward to give her a quick kiss, just a tease of how he normally likes to, just a promising touch of his tongue on her lower lip, before he swings his leg and drops to the ground easily, pushing some of the branches out of the way so they don’t scratch her when Clarke follows suit. “And if I remember correctly,” Bellamy teases her, as he picks a dead leaf out of her hair. “You got to be as loud as you wanted.”

“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up,” Clarke says, making a face at him. “You liked it.”

“Never said I didn’t,” Bellamy agrees easily. “Come on, the brush is thinner over there.”

They push through the wild branches until they give, as Bellamy spotted, and cut inward, continuing their Northwest trek. It’s not so much a path, but it’s less overgrown and Clarke thinks that at one point, maybe, this area had been tended.

“What do you think this was?” Clarke asks, Bellamy walking just a pace behind her. “Someone’s land?”

“Maybe,” Bellamy says. “Or private estate or something. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a long time, though.”

“Discovering new territory,” Clarke says and smiles over her shoulder at Bellamy, who squeezes her arm, affectionate. She loves going on small reconnaissance missions with Bellamy, usually no more than a week in length, and nothing more than scouting land, or making trading ties with clans, because it gives them a chance to just be together. They have the small home they built together, but even in peace, with their futures settled and their people safe from multiple apocalypses and random carnage, it’s not like this. Their lives and busy, and extended free time to themselves, so tease and talk and fuck without worrying someone will need them, is rare and precious. 

Soon even more so, Clarke thinks as she presses her hand over her still soft, flat stomach. Only Abby knows right now, but she’s got a half formed plan in her head on how she’s going to tell Bellamy: that the fight that’s kept them going, their inability to give in, give up, lose faith in each other, means that very soon, the life they’ve built for themselves and their people will also be for a life they’ve made all on their own. 

Clarke feels that bubble of bright hope, excited and expectant and thrilled expand from her chest and she can’t help but turn and reach back to catch Bellamy around the neck and pull him in for another kiss. He laughs against her mouth, hands falling to her lower back, her hips, to steady her and keep her in place to really kiss her. “Funny girl,” Bellamy mumbles, kissing the corner of her mouth and then her jaw. “Breaking and entering private land do it for you?”

“You do it for me,” Clarke tells him and nips at his chin. It makes Bellamy’s fingers dig into her through her jacket and Clarke lifts her mouth again for another kiss, biting Bellamy back when he’s a little rougher. 

“You watch yourself, Clarke,” Bellamy says, voice gone low and hot. “Don’t think I don’t remember how much you like getting fucked against trees.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m planning on.” Bellamy groans at that and gives her ass an affectionate smack. 

“Later,” Bellamy promises, his smile flashing his teeth.

Clarke pulls away with a grin and keeps going. The brush isn’t consistently clear, and she and Bellamy have to occasionally track to the right or left to keep from having to hack through the denser undergrowth that would require Bellamy’s axe and her hunting knife. It’s fighting through a few dense bushes that something hard and cold catches Clarke in the hip and makes her stumble. She manages to catch herself and turns back, curious, as Bellamy pauses and whacks at the undergrowth.

“Clarke, look at this,” he says. Bellamy’s uncovered a large stone tablet, waist height and at least a foot across, it’s cut edges dulled and weather worn. It’s dark grey and when Clarke comes back to stand next to Bellamy, she makes out faint writing on it, just clear through the moss that’s grown over the surface. Clarke crouches down and digs her nails into the moss and lichen, pulls it off so that she can read _Abigail Marks_ , and below that _1889-1956._

“Bellamy,” Clarke says. “I think it’s a gravestone.”

“No shit, really?” Bellamy asks, crouching down next to her and smoothing his hand across the name inscribed. “It’s fucking huge.”

“I wonder if there are more,” Clarke wonders and wades carefully through the brush until her foot hits something solid and she scrabbles through the leaves and branches to find another grave stone, this one marbled and in the shape of cross. The name is _Jacob Lancaster_ , and when she finds the dates, it’s from nearly half a century before the first grave.

“We’re in a graveyard,” Clarke says, the realization dawning on her. 

“Explains why the fence was easy enough to jump,” Bellamy says and waits for Clarke to wade back over to him before they keep on going. “Nothing to steal from the dead.”

“Pretty cool, though,” Clarke says. “It must be huge, like thousands of people buried here.”

Bellamy hums in agreement, reflective, and Clarke leaves him to his thoughts. They find more graves the deeper they get, and Clarke thinks they must be cutting through the center of the cemetery now. They have to backtrack a few times, when the undergrowth gets to be too thick and tangled, but there’s always a winding path they can find that is clear enough to manage, which weaves through grey and black headstones or around a little, decorative pond. Bellamy kneels down to check out a couple graves, here and there, and whistles when he finds one from the seventeenth century.

“Think how long this has lasted,” Bellamy says, awe in his voice as he looks up at Clarke when she pauses next to him. “Think of the generations of family that could visit this grave.”

“It’s kind of comforting, isn’t it?” Clarke asks, scratching the back of Bellamy’s head and offering him some water. 

“Yeah, I guess,” Bellamy says and traces the capital O of _Ophelia Winterback_ ’s name. “Having something substantive to visit, once somebody you love is gone,” Bellamy muses and Clarke pushes his hair back off his forehead when he looks up at her. 

“We could start,” Clarke offers. “We’ve got time, more resources. We could do this back home. Even for…” she trails off and thinks about a grave with her dad’s name on it. Bellamy doesn’t need her to finish the sentence, just turns his face so his nose brushes along the place where her shirt’s gotten rucked up and her hip is exposed.

“Come on,” he says, standing up. “It’s gonna get dark soon.”

The clearer paths get harder to find, and when they do find a clear cut through the brush, it’s so narrow and so winding that they nearly lose it a few times. Bellamy has to pull out his compass to make sure they’re still headed in the right direction.

“Eventually we’ll find the fence,” he says as he tucks it away. “We’ve covered some ground.”

The golden gold and pink glow of sunset make the graves look inviting, warm, and Clarke trails her hands across the curved, square and tiered stones as they pass, feeling lost in thought by the quiet, undisturbed rest of all the people who were laid to rest here. There are a few graves of children they’ve found, but most of the graves show at least sixty year life spans, and Clarke wonders at the lives they lived, before so many of their descendants were wiped out by bombs, or radiation; locked in space or left to fight for their lives on the ground. 

“Dead end,” Bellamy murmurs ahead of her and touches her shoulder to get her to turn around. They find another way to go, a path splitting off to their right about a hundred feet back the way they came and they take it. 

This one is more promising, and she and Bellamy are even able to walk side by side at some points. Birds whistle around around them, there’s the soft rustle of autumn wind in the air, chilly on her face.

“What do you think?” Bellamy wonders aloud, “Stop for the night once we get back over the fence?”

“Fine by me,” Clarke agrees, thinking about the fire they’ll make, the crusty bread she packed for them to enjoy. Bellamy’s got some dried jerky in his pack, salted and rubbed in herbs and spices. It’s been clear all day, and Clarke is already looking forward to the stars. Maybe she’ll tell him, tonight. After he’s made good on his promise and they’re intertwined together looking up at their past, flushed and overheated on the ground and their futures stretching out ahead. Clarke’s feels so hopeful, so grateful to have made it this far, and she sways into Bellamy’s side, smiles at him as he looks down at her.

“You’re in a good mood,” he teases her and Clarke shrugs. 

“I’m looking forward to tonight. To everything.”

“Me too,” Bellamy says and finds her hand to give it a quick squeeze.

Their little path rounds a corner and Clarke can see the tall, iron fence beyond two graves up ahead, and even better, there’s a gate, tall and arching. “Speaking of which.”

She doesn’t realize Bellamy’s stopped until she’s at the gate, the hinge creaking open with a low moan when Clarke pushes, but when she turns to speak to him, he’s not at her shoulder. Bellamy’s standing back at the graves, his back to her as he looks at them, stock still in the sudden give of the wind. “Bellamy?” She calls.

He makes a vague head gesture to her, chin lifted like he’s heard her but not actually answering. Clarke goes back to him, curious, as a bird trills once and then the only sound is the crunch of dead leaves under her boots. There’s an eery, hair raising shiver, like someone’s run a single finger up her spine and nape as she reaches Bellamy and follows his gaze.

The two graves are old, older than others than they’ve seen if the weather worn edges and thin slabs of stone are anything to go by. They stand together facing the fence like a warning, like guards for anyone who might think to come through the cemetery. Their epithets are barely still there, but the names on them are familiar enough that Clarke doesn’t need to strain herself to make them out. One grave simply reads _Blake,_ and the other _Griffin._

There are no first names, no dates. Instead, the matching, starkly clear inscriptions read: _In the end, Death claims all._

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos always make my day!!
> 
> I'm hanging on [tumblr](http://verbam.tumblr.com)!


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